A Church in Crisis

This post isn't about the present state of the Church of Scotland, although we clearly are a church in crisis!

Following up on comments by Graham Tomlin from last week's Alpha day, the church in crisis is the church in Northern and Western Europe and North America. That is not to say the church elsewhere is not in crisis, it's just that their's is a different crisis.

Graham identified two problems:
1) There is a cultural aversion to evangelism.
A fragmenting society prizes tolerance above all else and despises conversions and converts. The pluralistic nature of our contemporary society creates a built in bias against anyone trying to convert or change anyone else to their point of view.

2) There is a cultural aversion to Christianity.
Many in our communities believe that they know what Christianity is all about, that it has been tried and has been found wanting. They may be willing to try out other lifestyle or worldview choices but are hard wired against Christianity.

I think (1) is correct, we encounter this all around. This cannot be allowed to keep us from the work of evangelism. In a world of drowning people who don't want to be saved we are called by the King who loves the world to keep on throwing out life jackets and showing others how to put them on.

(2) is also correct, and wrong at the same time. What people think of as Christianity isn't. Even those with some memory of a childhood knowledge of Christianity have got it wrong. And many more don't even have a childhood memory of the gospel any more. The challenge then is to display Christianity in new ways, angular ways, subversive ways that will get under the radar and impact lives for the gospel.